wicked ones had wound up dead. So justice had been served, in a sort of rough and ready fashion.”
Vail grimaced, blew more smoke, and said, “You could have taken a tad more credit for yourself and this office without causing all that much of a fuss. The powers that be around John Bull have decided on honesty as the best policy in an election year, with justice served, the way you just said. The late Constable Payne’s position ain’t no political issue this coming November, and they thought they owed it to young Tim Keen’s memory to record him as a hero who died at the hands of a total son of a bitch but managed to take his killer with him. Nobody up that way gave a shit about a double-dealing foreman or a windy old mountain man. So they decided that cowboy, Will Posner, might as well get the credit for killing the two of them in another desperate gunfight.”
Longarm blinked, started to object, then said, “Why not? The kid was a love-struck asshole, not a crook. Before I left I heard he had kin in the county, and he’d have been pleased as punch to see a pretty gal called Flora at his funeral in a new hat. She told us later she’d always thought him sort of dumb. But at least she was there.”
Vail grumbled, “We’ll get to all them social functions you seem to have attended up that way in a minute. Having buried them two heroic local boys with honors, and not feeling it worth their while to dig Amos Payne up and replant him where he belongs, in potter’s field, they planted Oregon John there and sent Buck Lewis back to Texas as per request by his kin. The nicest thing about all this blood and slaughter this time is that hardly anyone is sore at you personally. Nobody but that French Sarah seemed to feel it was cruel and unusual of you to win a fair fight with Quicksilver Quinn in a reading room. Everyone else who got killed, fair or foul, got killed by somebody else. What was that about you telling them to send the bounty on Quinn to the John Bull Public School?”
Longarm shrugged and said, “I know you frown on us federal riders putting in for bounty money, but there was a handsome reward posted on Quicksilver, dead or alive. He did die on school property, and I happen to know the school’s strapped for cash. Can I go now? Or at least open the damned window, Boss?”
Vail cackled. “You’re one to talk, smoking them cheap cheroots like a Mexican! I ain’t done with you yet. I’ll allow that all in all things worked out better when you changed places with the deputies I had ordered up to John Bull. All’s well that ends well, and we’ll say no more about your report, save for the simple fact that all the events you reported transpired last week. Not this week. Last week. So how do you account for all them social gatherings and such you’ve been going to on our time for damn near a full week?”
Longarm said, “Damn it, Billy, if you won’t let me light up in self-defense, the least you could do would be to blow that stink the other way!”
Vail took a deep drag, enveloped Longarm in a pungent cloud, and insisted, “I’m waiting!”
Longarm replied with an innocent smile, “I was stuck up in the high country waiting on a train out. Did I mention on paper how that first victim, Stanwyk, had gone up yonder to show them how to fix a mess of narrow- gauge tracks? Well, somebody else told ‘em how to do it, and so the track workers had to just about take the whole railroad apart and put it back together. I told the owner of the line I ought to be getting on back to Denver. But I was told the trains just wouldn’t be running until the owner was good and ready to start ‘em up again. So there I was with no way to get home. But at least you’ll see I never charged for them to my expenses. The owner of the railroad said I could stay up there as a guest of the same, seeing it was their fault.”
Vail sat back, mollified, but muttered, “Must be fun to own your own railroad. You get to order so many folk around and … What’s so funny, you grinning ape?”
To which Longarm could only reply, “Nothing, Boss. When you’re right you’re right.”
